


Five By Five

by Lastactiontricia



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 11:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30122004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lastactiontricia/pseuds/Lastactiontricia
Summary: Status: One and DoneCategory: Angst, Buffy/Supernatural CrossoverRating: drinking, multiple uses of the word fuck, ahead be frank sexual situations, 18+Character(s): Dean Winchester, Faith LehanePairing(s): Dean x FaithAuthor’s Note(s): crossover for the wonderful @thoughtslikeaminefield for the Bday smasharilla challenge, pic is from this Deviant Art
Relationships: Faith Lehane/Dean Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Five By Five

Five X Five  
image

It’s just another bar at the end of a very long road. Those damn yellow stripes wind up mountains and snake alongside rivers, but Dean can’t bring himself to go any further. There’s always a bad ending every time he parks. Worn out motels and sheets that smell like strangers and cheap detergent. There’s something scratching to come out from under his skin and it’s ugly and carnal and reverent all at the same time. He’s tired of the song and dance of pussy that goes from grateful to goodbye. He can’t decide if he should fuck or fight it out of his system before it poisons his guts.

A bar is a kind of church. Something holy about the confessions soaked into the wood, sacramental about libations and offerings of flesh and sweat. The neon lights are leading strange dreams to reality and the music beating a tempo into Deans blood isn’t helping that wild side that’s hard to keep in check. There are flashes of flesh and the press of bodies- such a keen sense of being lost in a sea of humanity without having to act the part. It breaks a sweat out across his skin, hair rising along his arms, left over from some tribal instinct that followed drums and magic, that hungered for contact and belonging. Stanford has Sam and Dean’s heart is fresh broke with Cassie’s trendy boot prints all over it. He’s in California, too close to Sam and too far away at the same time. He can feel the geographical lines beckoning but he can’t just knock on a door when he’s still holding onto pieces of himself. 

The crowd surges and he loses himself in them, not dancing but closing his eyes against the swell of so many bodies that makes it impossible to feel alone. There’s only pieces slatted through like an optical illusion, winding parts in the smoke. It coalesces into a compact brunette draped in leather and painted with enough tattoos that she’s drawn herself into a different category than Cassie. He thinks about worship again, imagines that tight package prostrate and his jeans get tighter as she whispers in and out of view.

He gets a glimpse of dark hair, sees a twist away from hands and figures he’ll play the hero for the second time tonight. 

He’s never been more wrong.

She rocks a punch that throws teeth and even though Dean figures the guys got a shattered jaw, he’s drawn to the hot lick of her temper and that solid right hook. He wants to taste it, that black rage he can feel boiling over in them both. He stares so long his beers gone warm as she eyes him up- slow, back. That stare is like a fingernail down his spine and the lights flare red around her in warning, but he follows her anyway-there’s a darkness there that echoes in him. He wonders if he ever loved Cassie, or if he liked the pretending.

He’s never been a good dancer. Typically could middle school through it, and there were some moves so close to the horizontal dance he’d been practicing regularly, but over all- he wasn’t two stepping his way to glory. But this chick winds around him like a curse and her hands were cool and dry despite the exertion whatever kind of writhing she was doing. Winding him up like a toy. But he’d learned the no hands lesson she’d taught the last guy and kept it discreet. She had the dregs of his beer out of his hand and drained before he could admire her light fingers. 

They break a door that night. And a headboard. She was gone without word before the light, a wet dream, quiet enough that Dean never hears the click of a door eased shut in the bathroom. He leaves with her marks on his back that he hopes scars, and the taste of blood in his mouth and he’s glad he doesn’t have to hunt the human kind of monster. For both their sakes.

At the end of another road he sees her again and this time she’s bloody and determined. There’s a knife edge of wrong to what she’s doing, and Dean cuts the vampire’s head off after she’s about poked it to death with her stick. There’s a symphony of trees and the night sighs when the rest of the nest is cleared. She smells like the sweat of honest work and secrets bottled up like wine. The blood in her hair looks black in the moonlight and that smile fits in there-somehow, it’s sharp and sad. 

“Better get your name this time seeing as you’re so handy.” She’s already on the trunk of the car like she belongs there with her impertinent ass making the metal groan like he wants her to. He’s cleaning a machete, so he doesn’t maul her-this girl with both feet in the dark like she lives there. 

“I’m Dean… You trying to make s’mores?” he scoffs at the foot-long branch she’s holding like it wasn’t about to make her dead. One-foot swinging like she’s still amped, another kind of dancing. He wonders how long she’s flirted with death and if riding him wasn’t just another line she can cross.

“Does for most of the leeches. Don’t worry honey, I’m a professional. Card carrying member of the slayerettes. ”

“Thought that shit was a myth- fucking cheerleaders killing monsters-Hunter porn. If your girl power squad’s real, which one are you?” He eyes her like she owes him something and she rolls her eyes at the banality of it. 

“Faith. Lehane. Semi-reformed- ex-con high school drop-out.” she drolls while cracking out the ‘Voilà!’ arms. She wonders at his calm, the practice of it. All that leashed power she’d felt under her a lifetime of nights ago. He thumbs his chest before reciprocating, “Winchester, GED and a give’em hell attitude. Where you been all my life Boston?” She shrugs off the question, but cracking a bulletproof smile, “Waiting for a fuck me line like that to settle down with.”

Deans got hands under her before she can react him to death, all that practice not maiming washed away in shock that he could surprise her. He slides her down his body with a long look before he spins to open the trunk.

He palms a first aid kit and she shakes her head at the question he’s asking.

“I’m five by five,” tone bored-because she’s already too interested. He’s lost that boyish look, that fresh well of never had lain thick on him the first time around.

“Unless you wanna play doctor? You got something cherry flavored in there for me?” Sex is easy. It’s something Faith understands, can control.

He lights up in a rent by the hour kind of way that doesn’t feel cheap and Faith thinks- my people. It breaks a carefree grin across her face. She lights a cigarette that he steals a drag of and that acrid Marlboro Red smell is between them. If she could still blush, she’d be doing it now, dreaming a little the way she never lets herself, almost soft at the thought of his mouth.

“Nothing cherry, but I’m sure I can still give you a treat if you’re a good girl.”

He flicks the cigarette from her hand to grab a fistful of hair, pausing long enough to make sure she’s not going to redecorate his face before he licks inside her mouth.

“No such animal.” Faith about rips out the short hair near the back of his neck and winds around him like a vine. It’s a dance where she knows all the steps by heart. She’s grinding down on him before he can catch his breath and it’s all hurry and sensation as she wriggles out of her clothes and still manages to ride him with his pants half on. Dean wonders if he’s ever going to touch control with her, if he’d ever feel her beneath him and out of control in a way that has nothing to do with collateral damage. 

He sees her taillights before he can re-hook his belt. 

The road runs thin, stretches years. Brings Sam back to him, brings them back to brothers before it leads to Cleveland again. He’s sick to death of this grey city, wonders why the monsters run so thick in a town that doesn’t even have decent wings. They’re staying in some shithole motel that doubles as apartments for the unlucky, when the timing snaps into place like Gods finally found the sweet spot on the distributor bolt-he sees Faith lock up unit 27. He’d know that ass anywhere. She starts a little when they make eye contact, goes molten when Dean gives it back.

He puts his hands up with a ghost of a smile, “We cool?”

“Hey, as long as you don’t go folllowin’ me around or humpin’ my leg, we’re five-by-five, ya’ know? The hell are you doin’ here anyway?“ Her hip juts out and her arms are crossed already like flipping a closed sign. She looks…suspicious. And worse, resigned. Like he’s some old boyfriend she’s going to have to flick off like lint.

“You want to get a drink?” He asks and its friendly just like he wants to be and it’s so not loaded with innuendo that they each relax enough to think it’s a good idea.

“Fuck it, I got some here.” And she opens the door like it wasn’t just locked and he hopes it’s a good sign of how the night is going to go.

They talk shop, cases and Slayers and as the second bottle goes down- apocalypses. The almosts. Never the ones that cut, just the sweeping expanses of doom narrowly averted like it’s a story and not a memory.

“Can’t believe you put that crater in Sunnydale.” They’ve both got legs propped up on the uneven kitchen table and Deans slatted one in between hers like middle school.

“Yeah well, mostly Buffy and the Scoobies there. I can’t believe you met freaking God.” She doesn’t look at him as she says it, just runs a finger along the rim of the glass like it’s going to sing for her.

“He’s a dick,” it’s just above a whisper, Dean’s brains throwing other gears. He considers the way she’s been brushing anything close to a compliment off, so casual he knows it’s as ingrained as his self-worth. Faith has a million stories, and she’s never the hero.

“Figured that for myself thanks.”

It goes quiet in an awkward way, two friends that aren’t friends, just blood and sweat and pleasure between them. Too much contact to pretend they’re strangers, not enough to lie about being close.

She gets up and takes the glass from him and settles into his lap, like his dick can shut up his mouth and whatever’s screaming inside her head. His dick is hard, because of course it is, look at her. Maybe it’s the night and how tired he is, maybe it’s that he’s pushing, well fuck it he’s over forty now and he knows she isn’t far behind, and all the years and the times he had her, it had never been enough. Not when he knew here was a chance for somebody who could actually understand him in ways he’ll never have to explain. These are the reasons he lets his mouth write a check he can feel she won’t cash.

“I’m not the place you’ll bury her, that version of you that you want to forget.”

"I could do anything to you now, and you’d want me to. I could make you scream. Pop you like warm champagne with none of the hangover.”

Dean shrugs; harder in spite of what she’s trying to do and places those big palms on the sides of her thighs. That grip tells her more about that fact that he could give her a run for her money that any words could.

“You gonna go all Fiona apple on me?” He says it with a laugh that has nothing to do with humor because he can feel the cold wall going up between her and anything more than insert tab a into slot b.

He leans up to kiss her neck and its soft; it’s really just a skim of full lip and the hint of wet. She jerks from the give of it, but his hands clamp her back down

“You’re better than you think you are, Faith”. He kisses her and its full of half formed things they lack words for. That whiskey sharp sadness is still in her mouth and Dean wonders if that tang of weary lies as thick on him as it does her. There she is, he thinks, that smoky mirror, that echo. Touching her like this sets something right in his chest.

She tries to take it dark, add teeth and Dean just keeps sweeping her mouth, easing into it tongue deep but with no rush.

Their faces press together as she breaks the kiss but can’t lean away, ghosting words directly into his mouth,”Someone always leaves. It’s the oldest story. And that person is always gonna be me.”

“Just stay. Stay with me.”

He’s nuzzling places that make her middle go liquid warm honey and she tries to press that down, arching her neck away from him, holding her gaze on the bad drywall patch in the corner.

“I remember in school, back when I was still young enough to go,” Faith utters, and Dean realizes school hadn’t been a big priority for her parents either, “ they read us a story about a princess that, fuck; I dunno turned into a swan? No wait, it was her brothers, yeah, the brothers are just this pack of flying shit devils and she’s making them shirts, sweats for years over these damn shirts that are supposed to de-swan their dumb asses; and I realized, even then, that like- that’s never gonna be me. I’m never gonna throw that kind of effort into somebody. I don’t have it in me.” 

“Haven’t doesn’t mean never.” Deans not even sure the specifics of what they’re arguing about, how permanent he’s pressing for. He just doesn’t want the door slammed in his face.

But Faith knows that to love means to drown. Inky feet of booze and resentment and hurt. Drowning in fists followed by kisses. Promises of never again and threats of always. 

This is the only story she’ll ever tell.

One inherited, passed through blood and muscle memory. A story she screams at night after chasing monsters that have the decency to look the part. She’s just gotten done being crushed by Robin, and if you can’t make it work with the guy that survived the end of the world with you, well who can you make it work with. Faith feels like a poor man’s Buffy, lets herself feel the bitterness over it before dropping it back into that box she locks things in. Her and B are cool now, but Robin’s constant cross comparison hasn’t done that little quirk of hers any favors.

“Haven’t is because when we aren’t all fresh and shiny and grinding, the mystery wears out. You almost come in your pants from the grip of it then… then its laundry and look at this weird mole and everyone’s bored. Can’t hands just go places?”

“I don’t wanna fuck you like I’m picking off the drive thru menu.”

“So don’t, I didn’t say we couldn’t play house for a night. You want housewife shit; I can lie to you.”

She feathers her hands up his chest, ‘her hands are so small’ Dean thinks, and that wing sweep of a touch against his nipple cracks lightening down his spine straight toward his dick. He’s got his hand in her hair, sees that victory gleam light up in her eyes before he gentles it, finger combing her closer. He worries the edge of her lip with his teeth and she drags the part of her he wants to love with his mouth against him.

He lavishes attention to her breasts after laddering his fingers up the taut skin of her stomach. It feels like hours, alternating between pressure and teeth, sucking one after another until he thinks he can push her over the edge with this alone. She’s looking at him like she’s never seen him, and there’s something so naked about that shocked gaze that makes him go protective. 

Some primal urge to defend that face tightens his grip on her, enough so that he can stand up with her still curled around him like smoke. She’s so light to be the center of gravity even with her thighs digging dents into his hips as he lays her back on the bed.

“Let me.” Dean breathes against her skin and unwraps her like a present. Each piece of clothing is a new slow caress, and Deans found the patience of a better man. He kisses the dip of her hip, the back of each knee, skims his lips down the ridges of her calf. The knee makes her jump and the surprise on her face is so new that Dean knows it’s an undiscovered country.

He murmurs, “Can you lie to me now?”, as he kisses his way down her pubic bone. Its heresy and hallowed welded together and he’s never felt more like praying. There’s a scar on her stomach and it whip like and messy, a turned knife in an already jagged wound. He doesn’t know how it missed organs and his tongue there causes Faith to bolt up. 

“Not there cowboy, still paying that debt off.” The end of the sentence drags out of her because Deans spelling all the words he wants to say to her with his tongue on her clit. Both bitter and sweet, blessings and curses, things too fragile to be said aloud. 

That first slick rush inside her bare as the day he was born makes him want to burst and those muscles she’s always bragging about are clamping down like a new apocalypse dawning. Deans talking himself through this so he doesn’t blow his load like an amateur. 

Faiths wondering where this well of tenderness has come from, he’s just holding himself in her and lots a lot more personal than she bargained for. Despite that she’s running her hands up his back like a sucker and there’s something so earnest on his gaze that to breaks the wall her childhood built.

It feels like he’s loving her with his body and it’s too much, it’s Riley when she sojourned as Buffy, it’s all the things she could never give Robin. When he moves she draws against him and everything snaps into place like one of those rubber band toys people were always selling on the sidewalk. It doesn’t feel like the sex she knows, it’s like finding something that was lost. She’s drowning and not even the salt sweet taste of his skin can draw her back to shore. 

“I love all the parts of you that hurt.” Dean’s words curl into her skin as the world whites out and he’s coming along with her. 

She’s let’s herself have this, the holding and the second round in the shower where they try to wash off the insecurities, pretend they can see their pasts swirl down the drain as they move in tandem.

He looks so peaceful for once, there’s a pink light peeking through the blinds where the suns rising, casting his face in hatch marks, and she can’t remember if she’s ever seen him this unguarded, happy. 

It breaks her heart to leave. But this was only a dream made fresh for one night, spun so gossamer thin on whiskey and wishes, it could never last.

Just a dream.


End file.
